Super Metroid (split from dungeon crawler recommendations)

[cfx]

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[Vanguard]

What I really wanted to comment on was Super Metroid though. I find that interesting because I've wondered how that was for other people. I personally find pretty much any game with Metroid-style level design to be totally unreplayable. While on an initial playthrough working out how to get to various places in the game is interesting, once I know how that works and thinkng about a replay and thinking that "ok, first I have to go do <x> so I can get to area <y> to get item <z> so I can do <q> and then...." that just feels like a huge chore and I can't bring myself to do it.

It isn't inherently worse than needing to clear stage 1 so you can get to stage 2, and sometimes it's possible to sneak into area <y> without doing <x> first. I'm not terribly familiar with Super Metroid but I'm given to understand it has a lot of tricks that let you do things out of order like that. It's fun to solve problems in "wrong" ways.

[Air Master Burst]

It isn't inherently worse than needing to clear stage 1 so you can get to stage 2, and sometimes it's possible to sneak into area <y> without doing <x> first. I'm not terribly familiar with Super Metroid but I'm given to understand it has a lot of tricks that let you do things out of order like that. It's fun to solve problems in "wrong" ways.

The difference is that in a proper action game, the stages and encounters are generally a lot more interesting than your average set of metroidvania hallways. Metroid is dope to explore, but the actual combat is more of an obstacle than an enjoyable experience. If you enjoy efficient routing they're fine games, but pale in comparison to something like a classic Resident Evil title or the first two Dead Rising games.

Nothing quite like exploring a new metroidvania map for the first time, though! Also fun to revisit one you haven't seen in many years.

ETA: I've been looking at Grimoire staring at me from my Steam wishlist for a while now and am sorely tempted, but I also value my sanity. Anyone taken the plunge yet?

[Steven]

This is getting super off-topic, but what makes Metroid fun is that you can replay the game endlessly but do it better on subsequent playthroughs, and what better means is up to the player; faster, with more items, faster and with more items, with less items, or faster and with less items are all a lot of fun, except Zero Mission hard mode low% without Screw Attack. Yeah, get the Screw Attack if you do that one and are not doing minimum items because the last boss is super difficult on hard low% playthroughs without the Screw Attack.

[BryanM]

Metroid is totally a dungeon crawler.

One of the major problems with platformer dungeons is that they're not as good at giving people a two dimensional space to navigate. By this, I mean verticality is often miserable and needs to be limited as much as possible. The best example is the endless blue shaft they put right in the beginning of the first Metroid game. (This really hurt Kid Icarus, too. Even if you didn't instantly die by falling offscreen and sent to the start, jumping is plodding compared to the steady progress of just going in one direction. When you're driving your car, you like to keep going you don't slam on the brakes to a full stop every four seconds.)

Note how a much much better dungeon platformer, Blaster Master, lays out its levels. Elevation changes are usually short, and you're more often on the same plane as threats so you have more to dodge and more to shoot.

... I guess open world games have dungeon crawly aspects, too. When it comes to finding hidden loot and secrets or whatever. Sasquatch isn't going to find himself..

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I'm not terribly familiar with Super Metroid but I'm given to understand it has a lot of tricks that let you do things out of order like that. It's fun to solve problems in "wrong" ways.

Yeah, Super Metroid gives you a lot of ways of doing things out of order that helps keep the game feeling fresh. And that's assuming you're not using an outright glitch. With clever wall jumping, bomb jumping, and shinesparking, it's possible to get into a lot of areas much earlier than intended, as well as obtain powerups very early on (Spazer and Wave Beam can both be obtained pretty much immediately without the Hi-Jump Boots by simply wall jumping).

If you know how to wall jump, you can also rapidly climb some of the otherwise tedious vertical shafts in the game such as the early one where you revisit the end of Metroid 1.

There's also glitches of varying difficulty that allow for even more elaborate sequence breaks if you're into that, but even without glitches there's a whole world of freedom that opens up once you master wall jumping.

[Steven]

Super Metroid is glitchy as fuck. Some of the coolest stuff in the game is a result of a glitch, like the one where you reset the game and play the whole thing all over from the start with everything that you have collected so far aside from your Missiles. You keep all of your Super Missiles, though. This of course lets you get more than max items since everything is reset, including the items.

[Steven]

Oh fuck yeah, a Super Metroid thread. I like this.

[BryanM]

Oh fuck yeah, a Super Metroid thread. I like this.

Blaster Master Thread

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Search Action Thread.

[Volteccer_Jack]

While on an initial playthrough working out how to get to various places in the game is interesting

In Super Metroid you can clock a couple hundred hours of playtime just working out new ways to get to various places. That's arguably the core appeal.

Note how a much much better dungeon platformer, Blaster Master, lays out its levels. Elevation changes are usually short, and you're more often on the same plane as threats so you have more to dodge and more to shoot.

Have you replayed Blaster Master lately? It's just as bad as NES Metroid when it comes to level layouts, verticality included. Now if we were talking about BMZ2/3 on the other hand...

[Air Master Burst]

Hot take: Turrican games are better than Metroid games

Hotter take: Great Cave Offensive from Kirby Super Star is better than Super Metroid.

[Marc]

Hot take: Turrican games are better than Metroid games

Hotter take: Great Cave Offensive from Kirby Super Star is better than Super Metroid.

Better shooting, worse design. I remember Super Turrican being criticised for its smaller levels, for me it's the tightest of the bunch.

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

Metroid is totally a dungeon crawler.

One of the major problems with platformer dungeons is that they're not as good at giving people a two dimensional space to navigate. By this, I mean verticality is often miserable and needs to be limited as much as possible. The best example is the endless blue shaft they put right in the beginning of the first Metroid game. (This really hurt Kid Icarus, too. Even if you didn't instantly die by falling offscreen and sent to the start, jumping is plodding compared to the steady progress of just going in one direction. When you're driving your car, you like to keep going you don't slam on the brakes to a full stop every four seconds.)

Note how a much much better dungeon platformer, Blaster Master, lays out its levels. Elevation changes are usually short, and you're more often on the same plane as threats so you have more to dodge and more to shoot.

... I guess open world games have dungeon crawly aspects, too. When it comes to finding hidden loot and secrets or whatever. Sasquatch isn't going to find himself..

I think Blaster Master feels better than Metroid at first, but its strengths end up being superficial. Blaster Master is ultimately just a linear action game with slightly subpar, repetitive level design and is full of useless dead ends. It does have excellent-feeling player movement though, which is probably its biggest strength. Metroid's moment-to-moment level design isn't on par with dedicated action games either, of course (and I would say that once you get past the first area or so of each game, Blaster Master's fundamental action isn't any better), but its nonlinearity adds an interesting routing element with some bits of resource management peppered in, which is more than Blaster Master really ever does to move itself away from actually just being a linear action game.

Blaster Master does also totally shit itself at the end with that dogshit wallclimbing powerup that actually just makes platforming harder, which is a bigger black mark against it than Metroid's Brinstar shafts being crappy to navigate.

[Air Master Burst]

Hot take: Turrican games are better than Metroid games

Hotter take: Great Cave Offensive from Kirby Super Star is better than Super Metroid.

Better shooting, worse design. I remember Super Turrican being criticised for its smaller levels, for me it's the tightest of the bunch.

I'll take Turrican 2 Amiga over any Metroid game, design-wise.

Presumably you mean the NES Super Turrican and not the SNES one?

[Marc]

Hot take: Turrican games are better than Metroid games

Hotter take: Great Cave Offensive from Kirby Super Star is better than Super Metroid.

Better shooting, worse design. I remember Super Turrican being criticised for its smaller levels, for me it's the tightest of the bunch.

I'll take Turrican 2 Amiga over any Metroid game, design-wise.

Presumably you mean the NES Super Turrican and not the SNES one?

No, SNES. Original is a C64 game all the way, I think the NES version was butchered?

[BryanM]

Have you replayed Blaster Master lately? It's just as bad as NES Metroid when it comes to level layouts, verticality included. Now if we were talking about BMZ2/3 on the other hand...

I have hundreds of hours of both these games burned into my neurons. Aside from floating to the bottom of the ocean in Area 5, there's not a single place in Blaster Master that quite compares to the dreadfulness of the bulk of OG Metroid.

The original Metroid is a great game for people who haven't learned to play games. 80% of it is jumping through vertical copy and paste hallways (good god man, there's like 12+ entire SCREENS IN A ROW that are the same identical screen, copy and pasted over and over. How could anyone conflate these two games on shaftiness?? Metroid is the shaft master! Kid Icarus could only dream of competing, with its mixed up and varied screens. Full of tacky stimulation and things. Poor kids will probably get a seizure from all the stuff going on there.), while smol harmless, defenseless goombas watch you. With their eyes.

I'm not using hyperbole about the shafts. Here is a map of the first zone to refresh your memory. The blue shaft is 14 screens high. The primary gold shaft is 10. Pretty much every shaft in the game is designed like this, though these are the among the longest and are most problematic since they're the first thing you have to do in every new playthrough. The horizontal hallways are like actual levels and are pretty inoffensive, actually fun sometimes dare I say, but they're a minority of the time that you spend in the game. People just forget the bad things and remember the good, like a distant ex-girlfriend. The vertical hallways and to a lesser extent, dearth of bosses and mid bosses really ruin the original Metroid. It's like Last Battle bad, objectively.

It's fine to have rose-tinted glasses and to love things. But Metroid isn't a good game for anyone that wants a bit of challenge, and pales to Zelda and Zelda 2.

... that's my obligatory "why does Metroid get to live, and Zelda 2 had to die" complaint to the manager of the day. It's lame that we had to make our own remake. With overlays.

... it's 100% because it was released on the disk drive in Japan, and the massive load times ruined the game, and that's why they don't look back on it well, isn't it?

Blaster Master is ultimately just a linear action game with slightly subpar, repetitive level design and is full of useless dead ends.

That's your typical dungeon crawler .doc right there.

I mean what's worse, knowing there's dead space that only exists to be a depot for the gun powerup that you'll lose the second anything touches you, that you're free to sever from your routes once you learn the game. Or the tedious mandatory branches in Zelda 2 that you have to walk to pick up a key?

Very few dungeons are as dynamic and full of life/sustained purpose as Crazy Taxi's..

(and I would say that once you get past the first area or so of each game, Blaster Master's fundamental action isn't any better)

I will concede packing so many of the midget toasters into the game was a pretty bad call. They're not nearly as bad in Area 3 since you can just jump over them, but the start of Area 2 with the low ceilings... sigh.

[Steven]

Blaster Master is kind of whatever aside from its cool music. Blaster Master Zero, however, is cool. I still need to play both of its sequels.

[Sumez]

What I really wanted to comment on was Super Metroid though. I find that interesting because I've wondered how that was for other people. I personally find pretty much any game with Metroid-style level design to be totally unreplayable. While on an initial playthrough working out how to get to various places in the game is interesting, once I know how that works and thinkng about a replay and thinking that "ok, first I have to go do <x> so I can get to area <y> to get item <z> so I can do <q> and then...." that just feels like a huge chore and I can't bring myself to do it.

Late response since I missed this comment entirely before the split, and what I'm saying is kinda covered by a few other posters, but I'll add to the choir regardless, because I think it's an interesting point about the game!


Essentially this is exactly what (or one of the things that) makes Super Metroid so great, and separates it for most other games donning the "metroidvania" moniker, including pretty much all of its own sequels.

Despite not being completely open, Super Metroid is an extremely freeform game, and there is really no "true" path through the game - unless you're speedrunning the route the community agreed to be the ideal path I guess. Even playing the game blind, I think two runs will rarely be exactly the same.

Walljumping and certain other skills allow you to get to places that you might assume you'd need other items for, so the assumption "I have to do X in order to do Y" is in fact very rarely true for Super Metroid. The only real constant is that there's a certain group of bosses that need to all be beaten before you get to to the game's final section.

It's an extremely replayable game, even when you are repeating the same route. And for a casual player not too held up by racing through the game, I think there's a lot to get out of gradually skipping more stops along your personally preferred route. First steps would probably skipping the Spore Spawn and/or Crocomire bosses, but also figuring out which energy tanks you can easily forego and still survive the Ridley fight later on, is an interesting way to optimize your playthrough, that I don't think ever really gets boring.
Going for 100% every time would though.

[Steven]

Oh yeah, on Super Metroid Energy Tanks: you actually do need to pick up I think at least 3 Energy or Reserve Tanks because you can't beat the final boss without them. If you save at the last save point and don't have enough, you just softlocked the game and have to start a new save file to make progress! Yay~

[Sumez]

That'll teach ya

[Air Master Burst]

No, SNES. Original is a C64 game all the way, I think the NES version was butchered?

As great as the C64 versions of the first two Turricans are, the Amiga versions are just flat-out better (especially 2, because the jetpack segment was kinda lame).

NES version is closer to something like Sagaia, it's got a couple of pretty faithful versions of levels from the first two games and a couple originals. It's actually really good, but it uses checkpoints instead of respawning on the spot, which makes it much harder.

[Sumez]

I have Super Turrican on NES, and my immediate reaction to it is that it's an abomination, exercising every single game design mistake you can possibly expect from an 8-bit game. Playing it is frustrating and abysmal.

My immediate reaction to Super Turrican on SNES is that this game might potentially be able to make me enjoy a Turrican game.

[Air Master Burst]

I have Super Turrican on NES, and my immediate reaction to it is that it's an abomination, exercising every single game design mistake you can possibly expect from an 8-bit game. Playing it is frustrating and abysmal.

My immediate reaction to Super Turrican on SNES is that this game might potentially be able to make me enjoy a Turrican game.

I played NES Super Turrican on an emulator two decades ago, so I might be remembering it wrong (or might just hate it if I tried it again).

SNES Super Turrican is a pretty good game, but it doesn't quite feel like Turrican. Just like Mega Turrican. I actually owned both of those back in the day, too, whereas we never saw NES Super Turrican in the states.

[Steven]

Isn't Turrican completely different from Metroid aside from that you can shoot things?

[Sumez]

You can also roll into a ball in Turrican. And go in different directions and get completely lost.
And the main character is wearing a cyber armor thing.

[Steven]

Getting completely lost is pretty cool. Except for when it isn't. Might have to play Turrican.

[Austin]

What I really wanted to comment on was Super Metroid though. I find that interesting because I've wondered how that was for other people. I personally find pretty much any game with Metroid-style level design to be totally unreplayable. While on an initial playthrough working out how to get to various places in the game is interesting, once I know how that works and thinkng about a replay and thinking that "ok, first I have to go do <x> so I can get to area <y> to get item <z> so I can do <q> and then...." that just feels like a huge chore and I can't bring myself to do it.

For me the first playthrough in something like a Metroid is always special. However, for repeat plays, it's about doing it again, faster and more efficient. Also, the more you repeat these games, you start to find better, more optimized routes. You may start finding shortcuts, or ways to get items way sooner than intended. Sequence breaking, etc. Finally figuring out how to wall jump efficiently was a game changer for me in Super Metroid. Same (to a lesser degree) with cleverly using ice and bomb strats in the original Metroid. You finish the game once and assume it's a rigid experience by design, but the reality is you're just starting to open the doors of what's possible in some of these games, and that's part of what makes them entertaining to visit.

Super Metroid is in another category of its own though. The aesthetics are amazing and I could replay it just for the attention to detail and overall atmosphere. Its flexible gameplay is just icing on the cake. Really, really thick icing.

[Lander]

The trouble with Turrican is that it was made during the bruto-industrial era, before Japan exported iframes to the west.
Nostalgia mandates it a place in my heart, but it's not much of a power fantasy to get insta-melted by popcorn mooks.

Super Metroid is alright I guess.

You can also roll into a ball in Turrican. And go in different directions and get completely lost.
And the main character is wearing a cyber armor thing.

They also both have slightly weird Game Boy versions.

[Sumez]

For me the first playthrough in something like a Metroid is always special. However, for repeat plays, it's about doing it again, faster and more efficient. Also, the more you repeat these games, you start to find better, more optimized routes. You may start finding shortcuts, or ways to get items way sooner than intended. Sequence breaking, etc. Finally figuring out how to wall jump efficiently was a game changer for me in Super Metroid.

And then enter Metroid Dread, which streamlines the game so bad it essentially takes all of that away from you